


Sunrise

by bopscotch



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: F/F, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bopscotch/pseuds/bopscotch
Summary: Ladies We Are Doing Drugs
Relationships: Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero)
Kudos: 4





	Sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> the middle bit of a whole giant thing that i just slapped together where they go to rave for some reason. really got away from me.

Ortega stretches out on the couch, you in the kitchen, the sound of the running tap overwhelming her apartment. You press the glass of water and two ibuprofen into her hand, grabbing your coat on the way. “I’m going out for a smoke.” She nods, eyes closed, hand on her temple. The sliding door squeaks in its track, the handle is cold. You leave the balcony light off. Your senses are still fried, the chorus call of all the other tenants pricks against and inside you like pins and needles, passing in a throb from side to side. The city sprawls prone before you, veins of light running through crowded streets, traffic still terrible even at this hour. It’s beautiful from up here. All that noise and chaos sparkling like a dragon’s hoard. Ortega’s apartment isn’t the penthouse, but it might as well be, which suits her. Wealth really is the best vantage point. 

Time is behaving strangely, the cigarette burns down to nothing before you’ve even registered consuming it. You light another one, settling into a deck chair with a cushion that’s damp with the ambient wet of outdoors. The pill is still in you, dragging you tightly inside yourself, pulling down through your chest on a string, almost but not quite nausea. You don’t know what to do with yourself. You don’t even know where to begin. 

Instead of thinking, you decide to roll a joint. Your hands need tasks. 

There’s a touch on your shoulder and you jump out of your skin, your heart thudding like you’ve dropped it and it’s bouncing across the floor. It’s just Ortega. Of course it is. Wrapped in the blanket you left her in. She never stops sneaking up on you, the look on your face in these moments is the only time she ever confronts how little stock you put in your regular senses. You’re living in a place where she’s not real, invisible. She forces you back into the regular. At least she’s not smug about it this time, just tosses you a smile like an afterthought and pulls a chair up next to you. The metal screech on concrete is a shared agony. She gives a fond look at the little enamel snuff box you’ve pulled from your pocket; blue, green and gold filigrees that spread wide like creeping myrtle, a Christmas gift from her two years ago. 

“You just tossing more fuel on the fire?”

“Mhm. Want some?”

“You’re really flying close to the sun tonight. You gonna drive me to the hospital if I seize?”

“That’s a yes then.”

She snorts, “And here I thought I got to be the bad influence between us.”

“That’s just never been true. Give me some blanket.”

You tap your tongue along the glue strip. You’ve never given yourself a paper cut but you think about it every time. Her knee is against yours under the blanket, your elbows touch. Points of contact that would have been unremarkable before, now you catalogue them like a lab tech. You don’t know if it’s a reminder or a consolation prize. The back and forth roll of your fingers is an anchor. In some ways you could never justify, you miss the part of your old life where speaking to people was just as based in rote mechanics. You always knew the next step in the dance, weren’t caught out unsure and rigid. There’s a certainty that comes with operating as a machine, a surety of form. 

The flash of your lighter catches over Ortega’s face, preserving it like a film exposure. It’s an especially cold night and even without the bulk of smoke, your breath condenses in little clouds. With it, it swells into a giant empty speech bubble in front of you, lit from behind by the ambient yellow glow of a hundred street lamps. The backs of your hands pass against each other as you hand over the joint, lolling about in the warmth of the touch, the light static shock. You reach a pinky back, carefully, like the moment might shatter. The hairs on your arm reach out to knot with hers and for one second you feel terrifyingly, sickeningly, perfectly normal. What a human life this is, what a person you are right now, with her. If ever there was The Moment, this would be it. You feel time like a physical thing that’s emanating from you, stretching out to hold this. 

A desire to put her whole hand in your mouth like a grouper flashes through you as this latest influx of drugs sets like cotton into your corners; you look away in confusion and shame, sure she’s seen through you, sure she knows that what you want and the way you want it is strange and alien, and the feeling of normalcy leaves you just as soon as it arrived. 

If you say anything, she’ll know. That’s the problem with telling people things. Because then they know it. You’ve spent enough time in the nonverbal to know there are too many things that thrive therein that find themselves incapable of adapting to the spoken environment, choking and dying on dry land. Once a thing is put in words, set solid between two people, it’s something else. It has to evolve. And you don’t know. You can’t ever know her. So much of her is a wash to you, all the ways you’ve ever known to look at a person just shorted out. And the parts you _have_ seen… 

Ortega takes what she wants. When she wants something, really and wholly, she takes it. Without hesitance, without fear. Always.

Her hand leaves yours, taking a slow inhale and releasing a wall of smoke between you. 

You want to ask her to marry you. Instead you say, “Wanna watch the sun come up?” and she grins and nods around pursed lips. 

Car horns blare beneath you, you can hear their movement, leaving trails in the air. It’s the kind of noise that feels like silence in the city. You find a rhythm in the almost quiet, passing back and forth, sinking into ritual movement. The haze drops over you like a veil and you disappear into the underground of your muffled head like a mole, time dripping slowly over you, waiting. 

You come back when Ortega laughs abruptly, you can’t tell if she sounds crazed or if you’re just really, really high. She’s crying, just the tiniest bit. 

“My apartment doesn't face east. I just remembered.”

She’s right. The sky is already a milky sort of lavender. It’s already happened, somewhere far behind you. You laugh frantically with her for a minute, and then stand, putting this to a close. 

“Come on, let’s get your ancient ass to bed.” 

  
  



End file.
